Mobile phone cameras are highly underutilized, being generally used only on an active basis to record photos and videos. There is an opportunity to turn the camera and other on phone input devices (for instance microphones) into primary sensing devices that augment the phone's ability to process its immediate environment on behalf of the user. In this way the phone can better imitate natural human sensing capabilities even when users are distracted by the phone and it's visual and audio interfaces (i.e. watching a video with headphones on).
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.